Pablo Picasso

Thannhauser Gallery, New York
Elmer Rice, Stamford, Connecticut (and sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, April 3, 1968, lot 29)
Lucy & Berle Adams Collection, California (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 19, 1986, lot 50)
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1912 à 1917, vol. II**, Paris, 1961, no. 562, illustrated p. 260
Pierre Daix & Joan Rosselet, Le Cubisme de Picasso, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint 1907-1916, Neuchâtel, 1979, no. 864, illustrated p. 351

This work is in very good condition. The pigments are bright and fresh. Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down. The edges are slightly irregular, notably the upper edge, consistent with being trimmed. The sheet is affixed to a mount at various points along the edges of the verso. There are remnants of old framer's tape along the upper edge visible from the recto. The sheet is floating in its mount. Some minor discoloration to the sheet an old mat stain visible along the extreme perimeter. There is a small nick to the sheet in the background towards the center left edge. Some surface irregularity in the green pigment at upper left, original to the support. There is some very slight undulation to the sheet.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

“An effervescent year in Picasso’s work. He was never more inventive, more cheerful, more delighted with color and pattern, more curious about small things and happier animating them in his work”

Joan Sutherland Boggs, Picasso and Things, Cleveland, 1992, p. 132

Femme à la guitare dans un fauteuil pushes the boundaries of Picasso’s Cubist concerns and is an iconic example of the developments of his most important themes. The present work is testament to Picasso’s extraordinary draughtsmanship. Executed between 1915 and 1916, it drives his Cubist motifs even further and very much away from the classical style that came to define his rappel à l’ordre into a joyful and experimental ideal of composition through intersecting planes, colors, and figures. Its energetic execution and use of color is wonderfully varied, and indeed it is this variation that renders the work so visually stimulating and pulsating in color.

Notwithstanding the joyful character of this work, the year 1915, in which the effects of the war were strongly resonating across Europe, was also a particularly trying one for Picasso. His lover of four years whom he had met through Louis Marcoussis, Eva Gouel, was dying of tuberculosis in a suburban Paris hospital in December of that year after months living together with Picasso in Avignon. In a typical Picasso tour-de-force he was already however seeing another lover, Gaby Depeyre Lespinasse, who would then become the object of his desire. It is in such period of emotive turmoil, introspection and creative frenzy that Picasso was also at his most inventive. Pierre Daix noted: “Picasso’s painting had become baroque. He was experiencing an evident pleasure in painting, in exploring every available decorative possibility, urged on by perhaps those whose Cubism he had inspired, like Juan Gris or Severini—but Eva was once again the queen of this flowering, which, with a sequence of still lifes dedicated to Ma Jolie and an explosion of color, combines the most intense lyricism and humor. This will later be called Rococo Cubism, a particularly ill-chosen term. It is, in fact, amorous Cubism” (Pierre Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, 1987, p. 137).

Through the use of bursting color, which he had so despised years earlier, the present work figuratively hints to the character of the harlequin—the figure of the commedia dell’arte with which Picasso would so identify during those years and which would become such a prevalent theme in his work of the end of the 1900s. However, the inclusion of the archetypal Cubist motif—the guitar—is now not an isolated element in its own right as in his earlier works but one in harmony with its surroundings. Picasso now develops this theme into a play of form and motif. The guitar placed in the lower left corner is in parallel to the elegant head of a woman depicted seated in an armchair, a motif which would be increasingly resonant in the 1930s. The negative space of the hole of the guitar visually echoes the round shape at the center of the composition, overlapping the black element which stands as the body of the figure, and further echoing the head of the figure. The central hole also stands as the junction of the figure’s body and arms, almost representing this figure like a wooden doll. Our own understanding of space and its figurative representation is visually and conceptually challenged. It is indeed the communication between still life, figure and its context which make this work so incredibly fascinating, creating a visual dialogue of contrasting planes in which all elements are in conversation and appear to be in a state of continuous change and movement.

This ‘amourous Cubism’ as it is described by Daix is highlighted by the inclusion of a female figure at the center of the composition, and follows pictorial developments and the inclusion of small sprinkling dots from 1914 described by Joan Sutherland Boggs as “an effervescent year in Picasso’s work. He was never more inventive, more cheerful, more delighted with color and pattern, more curious about small things and happier animating them in his work. In addition, his paintings, sculpture, and drawings sparkled with those small dots that have been described as bubbled, confetti, fireworks and sequins” (Joan Sutherland Boggs, Picasso and Things, Cleveland, 1992, p. 132).

The present work was first owned by the prestigious Thannauser Gallery in New York, run by Justin K. Thannhauser who would become known for handling the finest masterpieces by Picasso, and donating 30 works by the artist to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1963. The piece was then acquired by Elmer Rice, an American playwright most prominent on the Broadway scene of the late 1920s and 30s who amassed a strong collection of Old Masters and Modern art, and it was then acquired by Lucy and Berle Adams, esteemed figures in the music industry. It is with this illustrious provenance that the work then entered the collection of the late Alfred Taubman, continuing the prestigious history of this magnificent piece.